Under orders from Congress, the I.R.S. is giving particular attention to returns filed by the working poor�

Rate of All I.R.S. Audits Falls; Poor Face Intense Scrutiny The chance of an individual tax return's being audited last year was less than one in 200, down from one in 112 in 1999 and one in 60 in 1996, new data and revised figures for last year show. Even those figures significantly overstate the risk of an audit for most taxpayers. That is because, under orders from Congress, the I.R.S. is giving particular attention to returns filed by the working poor who apply for a special tax credit. Such returns accounted for 44 percent of all audits. Among taxpayers who did not apply for that credit, the audit rate last year was just one in 370. For taxpayers who make more than $100,000, and who pay 62 percent of all individual income taxes, the audit rate last year was slightly less than one in 100, down from one in 50 in 1998 and down from one in 9 in 1988. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/16/business/16AUDI.html?pagewanted=ally